Hunting in the woods alone was a relief. After being on her own for so long, being surrounded by six others on the daily who were constantly asking questions made for noisy evenings. Jewelbirds were much quieter companions.

  For the sake of this particular venture, his lordship had all but ordered Telos to grant her a dimensional backpack—one with much more space than her pouch. Quint had then loaded her up not just on traps, arrows, and spare bowstrings, but also on medicinal creams, spices, and rations.

  And a fucking beacon. A beacon. For her.

  Though that was actually a request from the lord Quint was only too happy to oblige.

  Beacons were relatively simple in practice—a magic orb to call for help and pinpoint someone’s location. They were also a nightmare to create unless someone was particularly blessed with magic. Each beacon was keyed to the individual who made them, meaning the lord would know her exact location, but no one else.

  Lower end beacons only gave a direction and vague sense of distance, while higher end ones could even provide images or sound to the person receiving the call. Not to mention, they usually had a limit such as an hour or a few miles. The lord’s worked for the entirety of the territory because it was powered by his connection to the land granted by the title itself.

  So long as she remained in his territory, an active beacon would give him her location. Added to that were the fact they were single use items and consumed upon use, and they were expensive resources only ever used on the very important.

  It irritated her. He was acting like he… cared.

  She shuddered.

  Instead, she focused her attentions on the lands around her, on staying vigilant and mapping the area. At least amongst all of the other things, Quint had handed her a stack of precious parchment along with a board, quills, and plenty of ink. During the day she took notes in her own journals using her charcoal pens, then copied them as neatly as she could during the evenings to the parchment.

  Things weren’t looking good for the winter. Already, the feybeasts were straying from their diet of just each other to the wild game the people relied on in the area. Mid-spring like now, there should be twice the number of baby deer in the herds she passed on her journey.

  For this lap, she was mostly sticking to the inner part of Everwinter as a whole, a nice oblong loop that would take her through the heart of the forests here.

  The territory was rectangular shaped, with mountains to the north and west. To the north was nothing beyond the mountains except open sea. To the west were the floating isles of Skye Kingdom. Along the eastern side of the territory was a river, and east of that was the territory of Norland.

  Tui’neál’taré was the name of their kingdom, which when translated into Common—which it often was—became Kingdom of Fertile Riches.

  Which had since been shortened to Fer’ich by those who spoke Common.

  She hated the name. It sounded stupid. The original name was much better.

  The Fer’ich Kingdom, in the northeastern corner of the continent, was aptly named, of course. The forests extended through much of the kingdom, and where they weren’t, there were swaths of meadows perfect for tilling and farming. Things grew well here. A little too well, of course. The land was rich in magic, which meant feybeasts. Other kingdoms that were not rich in magic didn’t suffer them every year and instead often courted starvation. They were prepared for it. Everwinter? Not so much.

  Gods, how long had it been since the Outskirts last experienced famine? Centuries? Certainly, before she was born. It was dangerous, yes, but consistent food was pretty much guaranteed since no bargained tithe was more than could be spared.

  Since it was bargain magic, families and authorities alike were compelled to never break that clause. No family could hold back, but no tithe collector could take more than what could be spared.

  The difficulty with the forest that covered most of Everwinter was simply, again, that things grew too well here. Felling trees was part of the work that the locals did, and there were many skilled artisans who worked with wood in the area as well. They could clearcut ten acres of land, and by that time next year, it would be good as new.

  Unless one cut the roots all the way out, they would grow back exactly as they were. Most lumberjacks knew to always leave stumps. Trying to rip out a tree in its entirety would leave small bits of root behind, and separated from each other, they often would grow their own trees like a hydra growing heads.

  Some areas were over a hundred trees that all grew into each other, creating a twisting monstrosity of a tree sometimes a full acre across.

  These treebeds tended to be feybeast hotspots, and anytime she got close to one, the wild game dropped dramatically.

  Not good.

  The plants would live just fine. The fey and animals? Not so much.

  She marked them off on her maps as she went. There could be hundreds of feybeasts in one. Other than sneaking around to estimate the numbers and species in each, she knew she would have to leave them to someone else to manage.

  She kept to the forest, not venturing closely to any roads or villages, choosing to deal with beasts rather than fey. They kept things simple, at least.

  Even as she went, not relying on her traps except for overnight protection if she couldn’t find a jewelbird, she still managed to bag even more feybeasts than she had predicted. Some were purposeful hunts, beasts she stumbled across trails of that she decided to track down. Some were accidental, sneaking around as she was and happening upon one that was alone for her to snag quickly.

  On the fourth morning, something different happened.

  Quietly shifting through the forest, she ducked under a bush to eye a pink favet. It was a rare type of beast, one she’d only seen once before. Looking like a marmoset with tiny eagle wings, it was tending a garden bed of se’lok, a native type of ground berry that grew around the bases of trees with particularly strong roots.

  Carefully, she did nothing but crouch in a bush twenty paces away, watching as the little monkey creature meticulously care for each and every plant.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Why, though? There were ripe berries there for the picking, but the favet didn’t eat any. It just removed any pests and tenderly brushed any dirt from the leaves, touching the plants all over as it did.

  She stayed longer than she meant to when she finally figured out what the damn thing was doing. The leaves it had been gently caressing were bigger than they had been. The berries were brighter, and richer.

  Did it do other patches, or just this patch? Was it just passing by or was this its home?

  She shifted slightly to try and pull out her notebook from her pouch when the creature stiffened, looked her way, and then flew away.

  Blowing out a breath, she dropped her head. Damnit. She scared it. How did it even…

  … know…

  … she was there…

  The hairs on the back of her neck pricked as she realized the forest had gone silent. Shit. It hadn’t looked at her—

  That was as far as her mind got before she heard a shift in the leaves and sprung to the side, rolling over her shoulder and spinning to eye the beast. She only got a split second before it was charging her again, and panic threatened to overwhelm her.

  It was the next evolution of a chameleon cat—chameleon leopard.

  Fuckfuckfuckfuck—

  She rolled as it leapt again, not giving her a second to think or plan or even decide which weapon to use, only this time she wasn’t as lucky. The evolved form had even better camouflage, and while she could see the outline of it, she’d misjudged. Searing pain lit up her leg where it had gotten her in her calf with its claws.

  Not good. Very, very not good—

  It spun and swiped again as she pulled out her knives. She had absolutely no chance of outrunning it. She held them up just in time as a barely visible paw with inch long claws caught on the crossed blades. She twisted them and sliced, making the leopard roar out in pain, blood spraying from where she sliced between the pads of its feet.

  Duck, roll, duck, roll, duck, roll—

  She had hit it in a good spot, and it was bleeding profusely, but so was she. It wasn’t giving her the time to pull out her usual tricks without compromising herself. Instead, she focused on dodging first, trying to tire the creature out enough to land another hit.

  Shit, her leg hurt—

  She misjudged another roll, accidentally rolling straight into its claws. They ripped through the armor on her shoulder, the force of the blow knocking her several paces away. Before she even rolled to a stop the thing pounced, and had she not been as quick on her feet as she was, it would have gutted her when it landed. Instead, she pivoted to the side and sliced her blade through the creature’s belly as she went.

  She rolled, a wave of triumph passing through her before it was abruptly ripped away when the thing didn’t poof into smoke. She jumped up instead of ducking down, kicking off the creatures back into a flip as she desperately tried to create some distance. Fuck, she hadn’t sliced deep enough to gut the thing—

  She slipped as she went for the flip, crying out in pain from the weight on her bad leg. Gods. Shit. Fuck. Twisting midair, she landed palms first and pushed herself up into a leap, sacrificing her knives as she did to push off harder instead.

  Just as her hands cleared the space, the creature’s massive, barely visible, frilled head landed with a snarl on her knives, her fingers grazing the fur. With a gasp, she drew the short sword, the weapon she had the least skill with, as her last resort, holding it with two hands as she landed back on her feet, the creature pushing off where it landed to launch itself at her, the gaping maw open.

  Time slowed. She could feel its hot breath on her cheeks. Then there was burning pain in her arms as her blade slid satisfyingly into the creature’s flesh, straight into its brain. Before it had closed its jaws around her arms, it disappeared in a poof of red smoke, falling to the ground as a feystone.

  Gasping, she collapsed to her knees as the shakes overtook her system. Fuck. She was alive. She was still alive. Barely, but she was.

  Gods, that feystone was large.

  Fuck that hurt.

  She focused on controlling her breathing as life and sound returned to the forest again. Grabbing the stone, she hefted it into her pouch as the quicker bag to access before dragging herself to the tree the favet had been tending to the little plants on. Tucking herself between the large, above ground roots, she managed to find a section that would keep her protected in case another larger predator came out. A tiny cave. A sanctuary.

  As protected as she could be in that moment, she stripped, grimacing and biting her tongue from the pain as she did. One of the straps on the bag the lord had lent her was torn to ribbons. She’d have to fix it.

  Shrugging the other strap off her shoulder, she reached in and pulled out healing salve, a clean cloth, and water. Slowly, she cleaned each wound, refusing to let herself do something stupid like passing out from the pain. Nope. Not today.

  She cleaned each and every bit of the ripped flesh, suturing where needed, her ears focused on every tiny sound until the wounds were clean and cared for. Then she carefully used a healthy portion of the salve on each one before bandaging them up.

  Only once she had finished and she was holding the handle of the short sword to slice anything that came at her did she relax again, dropping her head back against the base of the trunk.

  Fuck. That’d been a close one. She almost died.

  Her lip quirked as she wondered what Tobias would say. Would he believe her?

  Yes. He would.

  That brought a rare smile to her face as she breathed for a few minutes. Breathed and remembered she was alive after having been hunted by a damn chameleon leopard.

  Very not good. Normally, any chameleon leopard wouldn’t even evolve until mid-summer, and there were still five and a half weeks left in spring. It was only day four, just before lunch. She still had another day and a half of travel north, away from the more civilized areas of the territory. There were likely bigger beasts than this out there, meaning the next three days were going to be harder than all the rest.

  She swallowed. What was she doing? Why was she? She was no one. Nothing. No one would judge her if she turned back now.

  There were still villages up north.

  Someone else will take care of it. Telos might be up for it. He seemed plenty strong.

  If it got any worse, entire communities could be obliterated.

  That wasn’t her problem. She was just trying to survive.

  These people had sheltered her.

  She was already helping them. She didn’t need to go all the way north just to prove it. There was enough data to back up her claims.

  She owed them.

  Hadn’t she already done enough?

  Her listless eyes slowly lifted to the leaves of the tree above her, dully appreciating their color in the brightness of the day while the feelings within her continued to rage. A single breath, almost a laugh, fell from her lips.

  Who was she even kidding? She was the runt, the small one, the powerless one. It was a miracle she’d survived this long.

  Movement drew her eyes to the root above her, and she stiffened, holding the blade and ready to gut whatever it was. Only, it was a little pink face. The favet. Leaning over the side of the root, it blinked down at her, flapping its wings a few times and looking strangely unsure.

  She studied it. The last one she’d seen had been extremely skittish, disappearing the moment it saw her. The little guys packed a powerful magical punch, meaning they actually outclassed her in pure, raw strength. Which made the skittish nature of the beast odd.

  The one above chattered as it shifted, twisting its head this way and that. She lowered her short sword but kept it on hand just in case the thing decided to try to make a meal out of her.

  It then disappeared, though she heard it rustling around in the leaves before coming back and holding out one of the bright red fruits of the plant it had been tending.

  Raising a brow, she reached out as it dropped the fruit onto her open hand, chattering away at her as it shifted along the root, clearly waiting.

  Hoping this was a sign from the Hunt and not a mistake, she hesitantly sniffed, then popped the fruit into her mouth. Biting down, she almost gasped out loud from the burst of flavor on her tongue, inhaling sharply as the floral fragrance mixed with a richness she had previously only had in bakery confections. She swallowed slowly, savoring the treat as energy returned to her body. Her pain faded to dull aches.

  The little creature seemed satisfied by her reaction as it chattered a little more excitedly, then disappeared. She waited for it to make a reappearance, but while she heard it gently rustling the plants again, it didn’t return, nor did it chatter anymore.

  Sign taken and noted.

  Gods were a finicky thing. They couldn’t really interact directly with the average fey except through occasional dreams or prophecy. She’d never had either, so she couldn’t be entirely certain it was the Hunt giving her a sign as directly as she could or not, but she always assumed just to be on the safe side.

  It was better to think one of the Gods was paying closer attention than to ignore one. The first was a compliment, the second an insult.

  Meaning north she would go.

  Damnit.